De Profundis by Serge Lutens

Love passionate and devotional in nature with tragedy intertwined hand in hand have always enraptured the hearts of many, since the ancient Greek traditions of theatre to Shakespeare.

Though the style of these plays can be quite dramatic and exaggerated for entertainment it is quite rooted in reality with how devastating love can be, such is the case of Oscar Wilde's De Profundis ("from the depths") where themes of abandonment, regret and redemption bleed out of his seemingly never-ending letter addressed to lord Alfred or rather to himself with no audience not even his partner in the confines of his restricted world.

"I don't write this letter to put bitterness into your heart, but to pluck it out of mine. For my own sake I must forgive you."

De Profundis truly unfurls near the end where a series of self-realisations imbue Wilde's heart with the "fruit of experience" with its dichotomic nature consisting of the hedonistic "sun-lit" side explored in the former part of the letter and with its dual "shadow and gloom" ultimately, paving the way for acceptance "For the secret of life is suffering".

De Profundis by Serge Lutens mirrors this with a gothic melancholic tone composed of bitter, cold, acerbic, vibrant purple-tinged chrysanthemums flourishing from the dark, damp, gloomy and grainy soil tincture serving as its foundation.

The work paints a vivid impression in my mind of a Sunday prayer at a church diffused with incense next to a graveyard adorned with chrysanthemums as offerings, shimmering with morning dew from the previous stormy night, the flowers suffering in their own way hit by gales of wind relentless and unforgiving yet the next morning the same event is responsible for their sustenance through water.

Christopher Sheldrake usually adores the use of inky, indolic and grapey florals akin to Fils de joie however for this work the transparent but rich and sharp nature of purple florals including violet are intriguing.

The chrysanthemum itself represents death, lamentation, and grief (particularly the colour white and yellow) in various European and Asian countries as funeral flowers despite their lucent luminescent blossoms they symbolise acceptance of the dead or rather the end of a life lived as a whole.

Consequently, this fragrance brings us back to the duality of experience especially in the form of hope. The hope to strive despite suffering and the hope to become wiser to attain the "fruit of experience" and become more whole as a being.

"Out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star, there is pain."